The incoming administration of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should replace the Republic of China (ROC) national anthem lyrics with something that represents all Taiwanese and cut redundant government agencies, history professor Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰) said.
The National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture professor made the call in an op-ed article published by the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Saturday.
Lee panned the lyrics of the ROC anthem, saying it was an adoption of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) anthem, and “an imposition hoisted on the people by the will of the party without democratic process.”
He added that the national anthem lyrics were a “placeholder” that was adopted by the KMT in 1930, which decided to use its own party anthem instead of formally penning one for the nation.
The KMT anthem was written in 1924 by ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) as an admonition to Whampoa Military Academy cadets — the party’s exclusive military arm — whose text the KMT adopted in 1929 to be the party anthem, he said.
The result of the KMT’s “usurpation” of the national anthem was the incorporation of party ideology in passages such as “The Three Principles of the People / Is our party’s belief,” and the recitation of the creed of KMT military cadets for all singers, such as the “nonsensical” injunction: “Be the vanguard of the people,” Lee wrote.
“If everyone is the people’s vanguard, who will take up the rear?” he wrote.
Tsai’s incoming administration should draft new lyrics that all citizens, regardless of political affiliation, can sing, Lee said.
“The pan-blue camp’s favorite mantra is to [demand] ‘love for the ROC.’ If they oppose drafting formal ROC national anthem lyrics, we know what to think of them,” he added.
Lee also urged Tsai to eliminate government offices and sinecures that have become redundant or anachronistic, including the Taiwan Provincial Government, Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and the Overseas Community Affairs Council, as well as the presence of military instructors on campus, calling it a “Martial Law-era residue” that is “a disgrace to democracy and an insult to soldiers” that must be abolished.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS